Ever yours,
A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.
Tocqueville, August 6, 1857.
You may already have had news of me through some of our common friends, my dear Senior, but I wish, besides, to give you some myself, and to thank you again for the kind welcome I received from you and in your house during my stay in London.
I regret only that I was unable to be more with you, and that, in spite of myself, I was drawn into a whirlpool which carried me away and prevented me from following my inclinations.
I have returned, however, full of gratitude for the marks of consideration and affection showered upon me in England. I shall never forget them.
I found my wife already installed here, and in good health; and I have resumed my busy and peaceful life with a delight which does honour to my wisdom. For I had been so spoiled in England that I might have been afraid of finding my retreat too much out of the way and too quiet. But nothing of the sort has happened. The excitement of the past month appears to have added charms to the present.
Nevertheless, I have not yet set to work again, but I am full of good resolutions, which I hope to execute as soon as I have completely returned to my usual habits. These first days have been devoted to putting everything into its regular order.
In France we are almost as much interested as you in England in the affairs of India. Everyone, even in the country, asks me for news of what is going on there.
There is a natural disposition to exaggerate the evil and to believe that your dominion is overturned. For my part, I am waiting with the utmost and most painful anxiety for the development of the drama, for no good can possibly result from it; and there is not one civilised nation in the world that ought to rejoice in seeing India escape from the hands of Europeans in order to fall back into a state of anarchy and barbarism worse than before its conquest.